Michele Waslin: The Obama administration is proposing a rule change that will partially ameliorate one of the most contradictory rules of immigration law, thereby encouraging legal immigration and helping to keep U.S. families together.

Michele Waslin: Immigration restrictionists argue that imposing a mandatory employment verification system will ensure that unauthorized workers are not able to get jobs in the U.S. and will choose to leave, leaving millions of jobs wide open for unemployed U.S. citizens. Of course, this ignores the facts.

Michele Waslin: Without the promise of a green card, legalization is nothing more than an expanded temporary worker program, running the risk of creating a second-class citizen with the right to work, but with no incentives to put down roots, become U.S. citizens, and fully integrate.

Andrea Nill: It’s great that Miss Universe Jimena Fernandez will be bringing her talents, beauty, and philanthropic work to the U.S., however, what’s unfortunate is that many of her fellow Latin Americans have been waiting for decades just to get their foot in the door.

House members, particularly Rep. Nydia Velazquez and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, were able to successfully block an immigration-related motion to recommit by House Republicans—a motion with the intention of forcing a tough vote on immigration that, if passed, may have resulted in the bill’s defeat.Health care reform now moves to the Senate, where battles over the 5-year bar, verification systems, and unauthorized immigrants’ ability to purchase health insurance are likely to continue.

Republicans aren’t just opposed to expanding access to health care for undocumented immigrants, they’re against providing any assistance to all “high risk” seriously ill immigrants, regardless of their immigration status.

Unfortunately, the majority of the debate over immigration and health care reform has taken place in a “no fact zone.” Immigrant advocates know this place well—myths and misinformation are repeated and spread, while factual information that could aid good policy is largely ignored

Plugging Pasadena’s School-to-Prison Pipeline. The policy was then to educate the middle class kids, but to not educate poor White, Latino and African-American kids. These policies continue, wrapped up in words of sweet kindness and deeds of destruction. –Dick Price Forget “Greenest City in America,” LA’s the “Meanest.” For all the talk and political pandering […]

While most in Washington have completely written off the possibility of including undocumented immigrants in any kind of coverage plan, Congress continues to be perplexed over legal permanent residents—our citizens-in-waiting.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Margo McCall: There’s increasing evidence that adopting a plant-based diet is better for human health, the planet, and of course for the more than 9 billion animals that are killed for consumption each year in the U.S alone.